The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • Page 43

Neighbours Virgin's list now on sale Shock-waves off pleasure ffrom the Messengers WAYNE Terence Maloon Vgetsu. Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. Riverside RS-9464. Second Genesis. Wayne Shorter.

Affinity AFF 114. WAYNE SHORTER is well known for his work with Weather Report, VSOP and the Miles Davis band in the sixties, but it seems that these days we hear far too little from him. His highly regarded Blue Note recordings will be reissued shortly (along with other material from the Blue Note catalogue) but, in the meantime, these two records permit us to assess Shorter's music just before his epoch-making stint with Miles Davis. In Vgetsu, he is in the front Jine of the typically steaming Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. Second Genesis finds him in the company of Blakey, Cedar Walton (the Jazz Messengers pianist of that time), and bassist Bob Cranshaw.

Ugetsu is the more exciting record by a long chalk, with the Jazz Messengers caught live at the famous Birdland night club in New York. The funky, tight-knit brand of hard bop for which Art Blakey is famous is expounded by one of his best-ever bands, with Shorter on tenor saxo-. phone, Freddie Hubbard (trumpet), the remarkable Curtis Fuller on trombone (check how fast he plays on the track Time Off), Walton (piano), Reggie Workman (bass), and then, of course, there is a human dynamo in the drum chair, keeping the magnificent machine of this band surging along. The shock-waves of pleasure keep coming on this record. In a review of a Jazz Messengers concert in London recently, the Guardian's jazz critic, John Fordham, surmised that the band's perennial vitality came not only from the constant changes of personnel, which have kept it on the side of youth, nor from Blakey's exhortatory and marvellously responsive style of drumming.

The fact that "anything can happen" during the course of a Jazz Messengers' concert has kept Blakey on his mettle for more than 30 years, Fordham believes, and this is borne out by the adrenalin-enhanced, tautrelaxed playing which still sounds so fresh and exhilarating on this 22-year-old recording. Some of the most provocative ideas nrr-irem rTrl.l'M'ML'li'l.M'j 11 rrTTTintrrriimrrwwnn Will! IiMt ill III-1 1 1 fl.liWH.m Till STRAI.IAN ELIZABETHAN THEATRE TRl ST presents harmonic suggestions provide an effective springboard for improvisation. The melodies are more developed on the Second Genesis album, whose Ruby and the Pearl and Albatross only need lyrics to turn them into songs. Tenderfoot (inspiring an avalanche of drum rolls and wildly scattering rim-shots from Blakely) became a well-known standard in the sixties. The firebrand player of outrageous humour who storms through Miles Davis's Live at the Plugged Nickel (CBS 80606), or the master of those exquisitely stylised, sad ballads of Shorter's later years are barely hinted at on these records.

He hadn't yet taken up the soprano sax at that time either. Still, one hears a good, but not terribly deep adolescent Shorter. The group spirit on Ugetsu, on the other hand, sums up most of the things I love about jazz. Definitely come from trumpeter Freddie Hubbard. His previous experience with the jazz avant-garde of the day is very evident (he had featured on Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz in 1960 and played with Coltrane and Eric Dolphy on Ol'e in 1961).

Blakey and company seem to take his stabbing high notes and furious arpeggios easily in their stride. Shorter's apprenticeship to middle-period John Coltrane was also evident at the time, and it's rather a disappointment to hear him only half-formed on Second Genesis, and not nearly so individual a player as he was. a few years later. Already his lyricism was more reserved than Coltrane's; softer, and his tone more reminiscent of Stan Getz. In the upper register, Shorter's pitch is so pure that he makes the tenor sax sound like a clarinet.

Shorter is credited as the tunesmith of three out of the six tracks on Ugetsu and five out of eight on Second Genesis. These are mostly brief whose rhythmic and From Page 1 No-one at Seven expects Neighbours to initially beat Perfect Match in the timeslot. What they want is a strong lead-in to the news, which has lagged behind its two rivals in the one-hour news battle now being fought by the commercial stations. WORKING on a soap opera is a demanding undertaking. The actors have to record five half-hour episodes a week.

Seven demands that at least four weeks of programs be stockpiled. Scriptwriting had reached episode 92 last week. The cast was completing episode 42. Francis Bell notes one advantage of experience: "The young people seem to flag faster. Maybe we're better at conserving energy." David Clencie 'a grind' Twenty-year-old David Clencie, who plays Danny Ramsay, acknowledges that the heavy workload does become "a "But its something you have to come to terms with," he says.

Neighbours has an $8 million budget for its first year, and has been in production since November, two months after Seven agreed to take it. Auditions were rigorous and even after the roles were cast, the actors were given only a thumbnail sketch of their characters. They then sat down and talked about how they were going to play their parts. The scripts often surprise them with a new facet to their characters, which were well-defined in the early stages. But there is plenty of scope for character development and, by their open-ended nature, anything is possible within the realms of suburban reality.

From Melbourne, the Straight 8's are as good as they are live. Perhaps Australia's foremost practictioners of rockabilly, the band does a very tight cover of Bop Street, the hit originally made famous by Gene Vincent and the Bluecaps. This track, and Wig Warn Willy on Side 2, are good showcases for Victor O'Neill's excellent vocals, in my: opinion the best to be found in a local rockabilly outfit. The single from' the album, Flaming Star, is a Milky Bar Kids cover of the theme song from the film of the same name, perhaps the corniest exercise in celluloid melodrama ever undertaken by Elvis. Who could forget Elvis's dad looking forlornly to the horizon while delivering the line, "My words are With an infectious hookline, it's the natural choice for a single and a good measure of the talent the Milky Bar Kids have displayed since they first arrived in Sydney last year.

A rockabilly tour featuring these bands has been planned for next month. Although The Jaguars are no longer, it is expected that Toni Allaylis will be singing. In the meantime, this is a well-priced album that should go some of the way toward familiarising yourself with a very worthy style of music. Tim Cribb VIRGIN VIDEO has placed its extensive catalogue in the hands of Polygram Musicvideo's distribution network through record and video outlets. Two tapes already in the shops are.

excellent Live At Red Rocks and the Thompson Twins Into The Gap Live. In coming months, Virgin promises titles from Culture Club, OMD, Japan, Public Image Ltd and The Sex Pistols. One Virgin release well worth the S29.95 is Video Aid (90mins), a compilation of some outstanding British clips. Unfortunately, while everyone else waived fees, Australia's video retailers would only accept a reduced royalty margin. The Ethiopian Famine Relief Appeal Fund will get SI4 from each cassette.

Bob Geldorf says, in the introduction, that four million people have already been saved by the record sales of the single Do They Know It's Christmas, and the more the video sells, the more people live. There are a lot of good tracks on this tape, most notably Wham's Wake Me Up Before You Go Go, Bananarama's Rough Justice, Euryth-mics Sexcrime (1984), U2's New Year's Day, Style Council's Big Boss Man and Paul Young's Come Back and Stay. Among other releases: Spandau Ballet Over Britain (Festival, SImins): With Spandau touring, it's as good a time as any to release this video of their 1983 London concert. Tony Hadley's vocals are a bit restrained and the lighting was designed for the live audience rather than the camera, but Steve Norman's sax playing is probably as good as, if not better, than it was during his Australian tour. Not bad if you are a Spandau Ballet freak.

Ten Years of Countdown An Australian Collection (Festival, lOOmins): No need to say too much about this compilation tape that belongs in everyone's collection. Some worthy performances from Skyhooks, Richard Clapton, Goanna, Cold Chisel, Skyhooks and INXS dating back to 1974. It does, however, rely on Countdown performances with the necessary inclusion of a dancing Molly Meldrum in one track. THE ENSEMBLE THEATRE proudly presents the Australian premiere off Al by DONALD DRIVER directed by BRIAN YOUNG with GREG BULL BENITA COLLINGS BARRY HILL CAZ LEDERMAN BEVERLEY PHILLIPS COLIN TAYLOR A play bursting with love, life laughter ENSEMBLE PIER RESTAURANT PRE SHOW DINNERS FROM BOOKINGS: 929 0644 Ensemble Mitchell's Bass FY 1 -a a ft LillJ iiii nm TKTS0NLYS10 Mon-Thurs, Sat Mat Mon-Sat nightly 8pm, Mat Sat 5pm THE ENSEMBLE THEATRE. 78 McDougall St.

MILS0N POINT I3S by Bookings or Fifties come on strong in 1985 John Hanscombe comings. The inclusion of two tracks by Melbourne's New Dance-hall Racketeers is a little puzzling. We're Gonna Teach You To Rock is lively enough, but no purist would call it rockabilly; it's unmistakenly western swing, executed very well, however, and graced by Rick Dempster's celebrated steel guitar. In Tiie Mood, the other Racketeers' contribution, is lame compared with other big-band covers that have preceded it. Once again, it's not rockabilly and one wonders why a more appropriate track could not have been extracted from the band's extensive repertoire.

A Sydney band, The Jaguars used to attract a healthy following, until they split last year and the lead singer, 18-year-old Tom Allaylis, sought greener pastures within the film industry. Toni was undoubtedly the band's main drawcard; a vivacious performer, she captures the spirit of the female vocalists of the fifties from whom she draws much of her material. They Call Me The Rockin' Lady is an up-tempo track well-suited to frenetic jiving. The Jaguars' second track, Don't Ever Leave Me Again, is a slower number more in the vein. The two offerings from Brisbane band The Treble Clefs Rockabilly Land and Big Bad Billy are disappointing, falling flat in places.

Regular Rockabilly. Various artists. Regular Records. RRLP 1210. IN BOTH a fashion and a music sense, fifties Rockabilly has been enjoying a revival for the past few years, almost as if it were a reactionary response to the gender-bending foppery of eighties popular culture.

Unlike so much of the digital, sanitised music on offer today, rockabilly hails from the redneck heartland of the American deep south, a fusion of country and western and Negro rhythm and blues that took place in the early fifties. Blue-collar music, it is not the stuff of the smart hair salons and experimental art collectives that have spawned a generation of eyelid-batting, sexually ambiguous drones who have fogged the airwaves with their high-pitched pap for the past five years. The five bands on this album all played in Sydney at various times last year. From different cities, they represent a good catalogue of what the local rockabilly product has to offer. At 57.99, the album is a good buy, although it does have short Mon-Sat at 8.15pm, Matinees Wed Sat at 2pm QTHEATRE ROYAL SYDNEY arrangement with The MLC Theatre Royal Company at theatre and at all Mitchells BASS agencies tel.

2M 6111. All credit cards accepted. SMH The Guide. Monday, March 18, 1985.